IAI Heron
ICAO HRONAn Israeli surveillance drone that can stay up for more than a day. Live IAI Heron positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No IAI Heron is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Israel Aerospace Industries
- Role
- Medium-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance
- Class
- L1P — Landplane, 1 piston engine
- Crew
- Unmanned
- First flight
- 1994
- In service
- 1994
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the IAI Heron
Israel built the modern reconnaissance drone industry, and the Heron is one of its most successful products. It flies for around thirty hours at up to 35,000 feet, carrying radar, cameras and signals intelligence equipment, and it can be handed between ground stations by satellite so it never has to stay near its operators.
It is widely exported. India, Germany, Turkey, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Morocco and Malta all fly or have flown it, often leased rather than bought. European operators have used it over the Mediterranean for migration and border surveillance.
Maltese and European aircraft are the most likely to appear here; most military operators fly with the transponder off.
Callsign prefixes
- AFM
- Armed Forces of Malta
- FRONTEX
- European border surveillance operations
How to recognise it
- —Rarely visible from the ground — it operates high and is unmanned.
- —A long straight wing, twin tailbooms and a pusher propeller, with a bulbous satellite dome on the nose.
- —On the feed: very slow, very long orbits, frequently over water.
Common questions
+ How long can a Heron stay airborne?
Around thirty hours, at altitudes up to about 35,000 feet. That endurance is the point of the design — one aircraft can watch an area for more than a day.
+ Who operates the Heron?
Israel, India, Germany, Turkey, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Morocco and Malta among others. Several European countries lease rather than own them.
+ What is it used for in Europe?
Maritime and border surveillance, including migration monitoring over the Mediterranean. Those flights are among the few drone operations that routinely transmit ADS-B.